


the table turns cold

by evocates



Category: Sān guó yǎn yì | Romance of the Three Kingdoms - All Media Types, 關雲長ㅣThe Lost Bladesman (2011)
Genre: (no seriously), 10k of build-up so 'yes' actually means 'yes' so, Alternate Universe - Space, Cao Cao Catching Feelings, Chinese Language, Chinese Mythology & Folklore, Consent Issues, Diaspora Feels, Guan Yu Having Agency, M/M, Politics, Tea, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-26 08:14:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10782963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evocates/pseuds/evocates
Summary: Chinese title:賠了将军又折兵(to lose the general and cripple the army)Guan Yu was dressed in nylon-spun cloth, a sharp contrast to the Earth-woven silk that draped around Mengde’s own wrists. There was blood on his face but no wounds. His lips, Mengde noticed, would be plush if not for the thin line he had made them into; a sign of rebellion incongruous to his bowed head. The skin on the back of his neck, peeking through his sweeping tail of hair, was stained with a streak of red brighter than drying blood.Slick like oil, and just as unnatural against his fury-pale skin.Laid there beside his knees was an offering much like Guan Yu himself: his famous long glaive, the peach wood - from the same tree under which he had made his vows to Liu Bei - broken, splinters shining dull under the white light of the ship.Guan Yu and Cao Cao in space. Plot and side characters taken fromRomance of the Three Kingdoms,with special relevance to the Red Cliff episode.





	1. 猛德 (meng de), “the virtue of ruthlessness”

**Author's Note:**

> This is the fault of the Ragethirst crew on discord. I’m supposed to be working, dammit.
> 
> The English title refers to a situation in gambling in which you seem to be winning in the beginning – the table is ‘hot’ in your favour – and then it suddenly turns cold, and that’s impossible to know until you have lost a huge chunk of money. The Chinese title will be explained within the fic. Hint: pay attention to the subplot involving Sun Quan.
> 
> In this period of China, people don’t call each other by their given names alone (i.e. Cao Cao is never ‘Cao’ and Guan Yu is never ‘Yu’.) Family and friends use courtesy names instead. Cao Cao’s courtesy name is 孟德 Mengde, Guan Yu’s is 云长 Yunchang, Zhang Liao’s (Cao Cao’s right hand man) is 文远 Wenyuan. Those are the only relevant ones.
> 
> Guan Yu here doesn’t have his long beard. He doesn’t have facial hair at all, actually. Think of how Donnie looked as [Long Sky](http://imgur.com/a/9H9NW) in _Hero_ , and that’s how Guan Yu looks in this fic. I hate that fucking facial hair and I refuse to write him with it.
> 
>  **Warnings:** Over 10k of the word count is spent on war politicking, Chinese cultural references, worldbuilding, and Cao Cao seducing Guan Yu using all of the above along with discussions of consent and also the origins of one specific kind of tea. All of the dialogue, and some of the narration, is written in a style meant to imitate Classical Chinese. In other words: my nerdery went out of control again.
> 
> Guan Yu is literally a deity worshipped by people over here. I have now written porn of him. I have dishonoured my ancestors, my cow, and my ancestors’ cows.
> 
> Beta’d by [jonphaedrus](http://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus), who is a gem, instead of my darling [kikibug13](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kikibug13), who does the beta-ing for all of my other stuff.

They marched the warrior to him unarmed, his elbows forced to his sides. But Guan Yu bent his own knees. The motion was graceful enough to cause barely a sound. 

Mengde leaned forward, fingers closing around the arms of his captain's chair, and quieted the susurrations that threatened to wash through the command deck of his ship. He lowered his gaze. 

Guan Yu was dressed in nylon-spun cloth, a sharp contrast to the Earth-woven silk that draped around Mengde’s own wrists. There was blood on his face but no wounds. His lips, Mengde noticed, would be plush if not for the thin line he had made them into; a sign of rebellion incongruous to his bowed head. The skin on the back of his neck, peeking through his sweeping tail of hair, was stained with a streak of red brighter than drying blood. Slick like oil, and just as unnatural against his fury-pale skin. 

Laid there beside his knees was an offering much like Guan Yu himself: his famous long glaive, the peach wood – from the same tree under which he had made his vows to Liu Bei – broken, its splinters shining dull under the white light of the ship.

“Let him up,” Mengde said without taking his eyes off that dark-defiant gaze. “It is disgraceful for us to treat a General this way.”

“I have no need for your hospitality,” Guan Yu said. His voice was flat and cold; too righteous, Mengde supposed, to twist the last word on his tongue like any other man would be tempted to. “Kill me now if that is your desire.”

Such a loaded word, thrown out so carelessly. Mengde deliberately did not smile.

“It will be a great waste for a man with skill as legendary as yours to die in such ignominy,” he said. His hands released the grip on the arms of his captain’s chair, wrought iron twined with silver. His men, ever obedient, immediately released their hold on Guan Yu.

But the General remained there on his knees. Did he, Mengde wondered, prefer it that way?

“My skills have led to the deaths of many of your men, Lord Cao,” Guan Yu said. Mengde's title on his tongue should sound cold, but the fire burning still in his eyes warmed it instead. “Will they not revolt if you treat me as a guest and not a prisoner?”

Mengde could not help himself: he threw his head back and laughed. When he crossed his legs over at his knees, he could see Guan Yu's eyes narrow at the sound of Earth-woven silk brushing against itself.

Predictable, perhaps; and terribly sad on its own way. Liu Bei's yowling claims were for their shared home-world, yet he had never once stepped foot upon its soil. Guan Yu, rumoured to have been born on the outer reaches of the solar system, surely had never more than a bare glimpse of it from a faraway telescope. Though Mengde himself - and the Emperor he served, of course - saw few miracles in the splendours of Earth, he could not fault Liu Bei and his men for their ambitions. 

“Death is but the natural consequence of war,” he said. He folded his hands together on his lap, deliberately rubbing his sleeves against each other. The embroidery at the hems - coiling vines - caught the light and shone silver slickness into Guan Yu’s eyes. “My men understand that. But do you, General?”

“You speak on the behalf of your men with much ease,” Guan Yu said. Slowly, he loosened his shoulders, releasing his arms from their knot behind his back. His hand rested light upon his knees, and his chin jutted out. The indolence of his posture stood stark against the blazing red now exposed on his neck; as incongruous as the smooth jaw where the famed beard was said to rest. 

Mengde folded his own hands so he would not itch to reach out to touch. Too soon, he knew, and spared himself a few moments of amusement at his own impatience. 

“A Lord who does not know his serfs well enough to speak on their behalf does not deserve his position,” he said, turning his tone as airy as possible. He cocked his head to the side, and finally allowed that smile tugging on the edges of his lips to show. “But you are certainly a rare man, General,” he continued in low murmurs, “to remain on your knees while speaking so fiercely.”

“I am,” Guan Yu said, “your prisoner.”

There, an opening: the barest hint of gritted teeth, a twitch at the jaw that blared discomfort in a body that was so strictly controlled. Mengde’s smile widened.

He slipped off his chair, carefully weighing his footsteps so they echoed throughout the command deck. Out of the corner of his eyes, he watched a few of his generals clicked their mouths back shut, but he kept his attention to Guan Yu.

“You are no prisoner of mine,” Mengde said. “You are my honoured guest.”

Before Guan Yu could protest – he could already see the words forming on the edges of those stubborn lips – Mengde swept the heavy silk of his robes out of the way. The sound of his knee meeting the metal floor of the ship echoed and echoed around them. 

“My lord!”

“If a guest insists on remaining on his knees,” he continued, ignoring the loud cry of General Zhang Liao; of Wenyuan, one of his most loyal, “then the host must do the same.”

Up close, Guan Yu’s eyes were wide and dark, and his lashes were thick enough to cast shadows across the curve of his cheeks. He stared at Mengde for a long moment, chest unmoving, before gathering steel once more with his next breath.

He stood like a warrior: sliding his feet beneath his knees and lifting himself up without once bending his spine. He kept his head stubbornly lowered, so Mengde remained there on the ground for a few seconds before he stood as well: with one hand on the ground to give himself support he did not truly need.

When he was on level with Guan Yu – somewhat, for the man was shorter than Mengde had imagined – he extended the hand he had used, palm up.

“Will you allow me to show you to your rooms, honoured guest?” Mengde asked, softly.

“Am I allowed to refuse?” Guan Yu asked, just as Mengde had thought he would.

Inclining his head, Mengde allowed himself to smile again. “Of course,” he said. “But a host is obliged to mirror his guest’s conditions.”

Guan Yu’s eyes flashed, and his brows furrowed. He telegraphed his emotions so clearly on his features that Mengde wondered if the warrior had chosen a weapon with such a long reach so that none of his opponents would have a chance to glance upon his face. 

“I will take your offer of rooms,” Guan Yu said, and made receiving generosity sound so much like a chore that, this time, Mengde had to expend some effort to stifle his chuckles.

“Much obliged,” he said. 

***

The air was still, filled with nothing but the sound of water dripping steadily from the ceiling. The door opened.

Mengde’s fingers continued to tap on the side of the great _weiqi_ board in front of him. He did not turn, or make any sign that he had noticed Guan Yu’s presence. Instead, he lifted the wooden fork, picking up one of the white pieces – as big as his own palm – and laid it upon an empty square.

Quiet taps of slippered feet on metal ground. Guan Yu’s hands shone pale beneath the dim lights of the room as he sat himself on the chair on the other side of the board. His gaze was heavy on Mengde.

“Who are you playing against?”

Dipping the wooden fork into the pool of water into which the pieces – and the board – were submerged, Mengde smiled. Such a question was not worthy of answering.

“The greatest treasure of a warlord is the morale of his men,” he said instead, keeping his voice mild as he exchanged some of the black pieces on the board for white. “The Emperor understands the need for such expense.”

Turning his wrist, Mengde offered the fork to Guan Yu. He carefully did not allow himself to linger on how hesitation made those dark eyes shine.

“This is a waste,” Guan Yu said, sounding firm. But he took the fork from Cao Cao’s hand nonetheless. His thumb stroke over the polished edge, and wonder crept into the sides of his eyes.

It was rare, Mengde supposed, for Guan Yu to witness wood being used for such frivolous purposes.

Unfolding his wrist in the direction of the dripping water, he allowed a few drops to collect in his palm. Then he leaned forward until his fingers were almost touching Guan Yu’s skin, and let them fall from his hands down to the board.

“We are at war,” Mengde reminded. Unneeded to be said: _You and I both know whose ambitions are at fault for that_.

Narrowing his eyes, Guan Yu looked away. He jerked one of the black pieces from the side gutter and placed it down on the board with such force that water splashed hard enough to skirt the edges of his still-nylon sleeve.

“There would be no war if the people had been treated fairly,” Guan Yu said, and there was that twitch in his jaw again. “There would be no war if justice had been allowed to rule the land.”

“Is it truly justice when the people willingly dried themselves up until their throats turned to dust for the hope for change?” Mengde kept his touch gentle as he took the fork from Guan Yu’s hand. “To feed on lies?”

Those pale hands clenched into fists, knuckles showing through the thin skin. Those hands had killed hundreds of men, Mengde knew, and yet the blood he could imagine overlying them only increased the starkness of their beauty.

“He does not _lie_ ,” Guan Yu hissed, leaning forward. 

This man, Mengde thought, would do terribly in the imperial court. Only a few sentences and he laid out the very topic that they were discussing bare, as obscene as the flashes of his wrists as he angrily switched white pieces out for black.

“He promises victory when it cannot be assured,” Mengde said. Then, before Guan Yu could protest again, he lifted another white piece. “To offer water to those with parched throats without assuring that his word could be upheld… even you must admit the cruelty.”

Guan Yu tilted his head. The dim lights of the room skittered across his cheeks, casting the darkness of his eyes into sharp relief. His lips were wet.

“What knows you of thirst, your lordship?” he asked, and his eyes turned deliberately to Mengde’s silk sleeve, then upwards, to the ceiling where precious water still dripped freely.

Using the fork, Mengde placed his white piece on the board. Ceramic met wood through a shallow splash. The sounds reverberated loud around them.

“Very little,” Mengde said. He raised his eyes. “But I know as well as you do, General, the need for loyalty to a lord who is flawed.”

Only deep-rooted control over his body stopped Guan Yu from flinching, but Mengde could see the remnants of them flickering through those large, well-shaped eyes. He shook his head. “The loyalty of subjects must be paid with respect on the part of the sovereign,” he said, voice soft. “The classics of history have taught us that.”

“You hold history close to your heart,” Mengde observed.

Guan Yu granted him a thin smile, his hand frozen in the midst of reaching out for the fork. “What else is there for those such as us to hold on to?”

So the rumours were true then: this man was born in the distant part of the solar system, or perhaps ever further out in the depths of the galaxy. Only those born away on Earth held its legends and precepts so close to their chest, after all.

Carefully, Mengde lowered his head, focusing instead on exchanging black pieces for white. Guan Yu was not a man who understood the difference between compassion and pity.

“You find this disrespectful?” he asked instead.

“To the people,” Guan Yu said. He had folded his hands in front of him, so Mengde placed the wooden fork back on its stone stand on the side of the board. “To those parched throats you spoke so easily about.”

“The treasure of a warlord is the morale of his men,” Mengde repeated. He swept an arm out, movement deliberately extravagant to send the silk of his sleeve flapping in the still air. “This is the sign of respect for their efforts and their lives. My respect, and the Emperor’s respect.”

“Through _waste_?”

“Waste breeds confidence,” Mengde said. He scooped water up into his palm before splaying out his fingers, letting the drops fall back down. “Waste breeds assurance that their efforts are not in vain.”

Matters were far more complex than that, of course; Mengde had to strike a careful balance between indulging his men’s need to see extravagance on his person, and to not seem luxurious and breed instead resentment. 

To say all that would be taking this game too seriously.

He smiled, and said, “Not all of us have the privilege of your martial skills to impress, General.”

Guan Yu shook his head again. “My skills are not to impress,” he said. “These hands…” He extended one, surely to make some gesture. 

It was a ripe opportunity.

Mengde took hold of that wrist. His fingers ran over the fragile strength of the bones, calluses scraping light over smooth skin. Beneath the long, light strokes, he felt Guan Yu’s pulse speeding up. 

A strip on his neck was slowly darkening to red. A tattoo, Mengde knew now; ink that had invaded the skin and set to flare at the rushing of blood.

“They are beautiful,” Mengde said. He slurred the words as he lowered his voice, turning the touch of syllables with each other into a caress against Guan Yu’s skin. “The touch of peach wood should have roughened them, and the blood should have darkened them.” 

Running a nail over the web between Guan Yu’s thumb and index finger, over the thin skin that surely rubbed hardest over the wooden staff of his glaive, he kept his gaze on those widening eyes and parted lips.

“Yet their beauty is still akin to the sight of the moon while standing on Earth.”

“Your lordship,” Guan Yu tried, sounding strangled.

Mengde stood up. The sound of his wooden chair scraping over the metal floor made Guan Yu jerk, but his hand remained limp in Mengde’s. Mengde leaned down and, still keeping his eyes on Guan Yu’s face, he brushed his lips over the knuckles that had been so strained.

At that moment, the door opened. Mengde opened his fingers just as Guan Yu jerked back, and he swept over to the side of the board, blocking the other man from Wenyuan’s sight as the man hurried in.

“News from Earth, my lord,” Wenyuan said, speaking even as he knelt at Mengde’s feet. “The moon is currently under siege.”

“What?” Guan Yu shouted.

Reaching back, Mengde placed a hand on his shoulder. “I did not order for an attack,” he noted.

Lifting his head, Zhang Liao gave him a small, wry smile. “We did not act against your orders, my lord,” he said. “It is Sun Quan’s forces.”

Sun Quan, who recently offered Liu Bei his sister’s hand in marriage for the sake of an alliance between the two pseudo kingdoms to go against Mengde himself. For him to show his cards was not surprising; it was, however, disappointing that he did it so soon.

Mengde had been hoping to keep Guan Yu here with him for a little longer.

The man himself was practically vibrating underneath his hand, now. Mengde spared him a glance before he turned back to Wenyuan. “Show me, then.” 

His General stood up immediately, and turned towards the door. When Mengde lifted his hand, Guan Yu shot after him almost immediately. Mengde followed much more slowly: he already knew what he would see when they reached the command deck. 

Even if Sun Quan thought himself resourceful, his general Zhou Yu was far too predictable

As the door closed, he took a glance backwards to the _weiqi_ board.

The white had almost overwhelmed the black. If he had had time for two more moves, he would have won.

***

Ships surrounded the moon, large and looming.

Sun Quan’s colours resembled dried blood underneath the light of the yellow sun. And the streaks of yellow on the sides: nothing more than fool’s gold; an egotistical man’s pretence at emperorship. 

Terribly trite. Terribly gaudy. 

“There is no honour in this,” Guan Yu said.

His voice was so soft that Mengde had to turn his head to hear him. The sight of red – bright red, like fresh blood – caught his eye. The colour blared bright on Guan Yu’s neck; a scream caught in his throat desperately wishing to escape. 

A part of Mengde wished to laugh. _There is no honour in war_ , he almost said. But he remembered Guan Yu on his knees; remembered his insistence that he was naught but a prisoner, and he stilled his tongue. 

This man, this warrior, would twine honour around his spine and ribs until his back snapped and his ribs shattered. If only so he could force some of it into the universe through the blood he spilled among the sand and stars.

His eyes burned so bright.

“What do you wish to do about this, General?” Mengde asked.

Guan Yu dipped his head down. His hands rose, clasping into a fist in front of him. The smack of flesh on flesh echoed throughout a room. “I beg leave of you to go.”

There were eyes all around them. There was a difference, as deep as a trench in the Earth’s oceans, between a game played in private and one played in front of one’s men. Mengde kept his hand stiff by his sides, and did not reach out to touch that pale, smooth cheek; did not reach out to brush his thumb over those half-lidded, lowered eyes.

Instead, he said, “You are not my prisoner.” 

“I beg leave of you to go,” Guan Yu repeated.

Mengde took an unneeded glance towards the wide screen projected on the ship’s now-mirrored windows. Ships, numbering in the hundreds, so many. Some so large that they almost dwarfed the sight of Earth, a glimmering blue jewel in the distance.

Did Guan Yu even notice the Earth? Or were those eyes so blinded by the fear for Liu Bei, his supposed elder brother, being in danger that he could no longer see beauty, no longer see the prize of his ambitions hovering in front of him?

He took one step forward. “You are but one man, General.”

 _What can you do?_ He did not say the words, but they rang out in the command deck nonetheless, echoing in the ears of Mengde’s soldiers. 

A rebuke of shame: a warrior who thought himself capable of turning the tide of battle alone had far too much pride. No matter how true it might be.

Guan Yu lifted his eyes. Mengde watched as his chest expanded high enough to make his shoulders tremble. He watched as Guan Yu fell to his knees. He watched as a proud man splayed his hands on the metal floor in front of his feet. He watched as one of the universe’s greatest warriors lower his head until it touched that ground. He felt the tremors of the ground at his feet as the universe shifted, near-imperceptibly.

“Please,” Guan Yu said. “May I borrow some of your men?”

“Sun Quan has deployed his entire army to follow the tails of his sister’s bridal carriage,” Mengde said. When he lowered himself down, he did not allow his knee to touch the metal floor. He rested his elbow on top of it instead. “Not even a few of my best men will be able to win this battle.”

Guan Yu did not speak. He did not lift his head.

“You are asking a great boon of me, Guan-gong,” Mengde said, and ignored the sharp intake of breaths from those around them at his use of Guan Yu’s unofficial but oft-used title. “You ask my men to risk their lives for your sake. For the sake of a man who would order their deaths without a thought.” He paused.

“Have you no shame? Have you no _pride_?”

This close, he could see the minute quaver as it shuddered down Guan Yu’s spine. Mengde hid his smile; he had slipped a knife between the man’s ribs, and he was not as calloused and unfeeling as to brag about it in public.

“Pride and shame both belong to myself alone,” Guan Yu said. His voice remained steady. “I have pledged all that is mine in service to my elder brother. This is but a small price to pay.”

“There is a thin line to walk between loyalty and fanaticism,” Mengde pointed out. He folded his hands inside his sleeves. The heavy silver embroidery – lotus flowers, half in bloom – glinted underneath the fluorescent lights of the deck.

“One drawn by hands far worthier than mine,” Guan Yu said. Splayed on the floor, his fingers twitched. “My elder brother has steady wrists, your lordship.”

Out of the corner of his eyes, Mengde could see some of his men beginning to shift. Wenyuan remained still, of course – he expected nothing less of his most loyal – but the other generals had not the ears to capture the swift-running stream that laid below the words now exchanged.

“Steady, perhaps, but are they strong enough to carry the wood needed for the roof of a home?”

Fingers closed into fists beside Guan Yu’s head. His chest raised and lowered in a fixed rhythm. “They are,” he said, and though he did not raise his voice, the strength of those words were nearly enough to throw them into Mengde’s face.

Inclining his head, Mengde rocked back on his knees, and stood up in one fluid motion. “General Zhang Liao,” he said, his eyes not leaving Guan Yu as he addressed Wenyuan. “Ready the army for battle.”

“The army, my lord?” Wenyuan asked.

“Deploy every single able man, and every single ship except for those docked for repairs and those required for the Emperor’s protection,” Mengde said, and held up a hand to forestall the protests he knew would come.

Turning his head, he scanned the men who crowded around him. There was mutiny writ on many faces; they required a reminder.

“We serve the Emperor,” he said slowly. “Our respect for our Emperor is a daily reminder of honour, and duty; of the precepts and values of our ancestors that took us among these stars that we live now, and which had breathed green and blue back into a world on the verge of becoming grey.”

Mengde curved his lips up into a thin smile.

“What right can we claim to serve the Emperor, Generals, when we allow ourselves to be outshone in righteousness?”

That was not the reason why he would send his armies. Mengde had many reasons: a chance to bring humiliation upon Sun Quan’s doorstep; the brief sight of Liu Bei’s head, bowed in submission and shame.

The sight of Guan Yu’s eyes, now, wide and staring at Mengde, his head tipped up at an uncomfortable angle. “Your lordship,” the warrior started.

Smile widening, Mengde cocked his head to the side. “Sun Quan dresses his ships in gold,” he said. “It is long past time that he understands the power of the Emperor’s true right hand.”

An answer not made for Guan Yu, but for his men. He heard more than saw Wenyuan’s fist hit his palm; felt the shift in the air as his most loyal General bowed his head. “Yes, my lord.”

“Take care, Wenyuan,” Mengde said, his voice a low murmur. “I do not wish to have to mourn multitudes.”

Wenyuan nodded – sharp, his chin touching his chest – before he turned and headed out of the room. The leather soles of his shoes were loud upon the metal floor. The sounds grew to a cacophony as the other Generals finally understood their cues, and made to leave as well.

When the command deck was empty, Mengde tossed his sleeves out of the way as he reached out to Guan Yu. He caught hold of the warrior’s elbows, and bade him to stand with pressure placed on the insides, where the skin was sensitive to feel it even through the deadening nylon Guan Yu still insisted upon wearing.

“Liu Bei will not die tonight,” Mengde said. “I will make sure of it.”

That was not a difficult promise to make; Mengde always made sure to take a direct hand in the tactics of battle even though he spent most of his thoughts on the strategies of war. 

“Why?” Guan Yu breathed. “Why would you not let me go?”

“There are five thousand ships in my army, and carrying within them five hundred thousand men,” Mengde said mildly. “You, alone, would have outshone them all.”

The confusion in Guan Yu’s eyes only grew. Mengde gave him a small laugh, and brushed the tips of his fingers over the curve of one bicep; over one of the nexus of Guan Yu’s strength.

“Come, General,” Mengde said, leading him to the door. “We must watch their preparations.”

Guan Yu followed without protest; he didn’t expect any. These were men who would die for his sake, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guan-gong: The suffix ‘-gong’ is a combination of ‘lord,’ ‘court official.’ Here, the most significant thing is that ‘Guan-gong’ is the term most frequently used to refer to Guan Yu after he has been deified. 
> 
> The scene with the giant _weiqi_ board that’s submerged in water is shamelessly stolen and adapted from [that scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZXgHPuf2a0) with Long Sky in _Hero_ , right before his fight with Nameless.
> 
> The tattooed red collar is stolen from [Niney](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Niney). I might have adapted it, or might have taken it wholesale; I’m not sure anymore.


	2. 允常 (yun chang), “the constancy of luck”

Without the usual eyes of his men watching him, the command deck seemed overly large, every breath echoing. Mengde shifted against the captain’s chair – wrought iron made for an uncomfortable seat – and watched the battle unfold in front of him. 

Black and silver were beginning to overwhelm red and gold. For a moment, Mengde regretted the times he lived in; if he was a general in the times of history, he would have the joy of seeing his own name writ on a flag flying high above his ships. Now there was only the sight of Sun Quan’s being broken apart as his ships were shot down. That, he supposed, did well enough.

Footsteps approached. Mengde did not turn his head, instead leaning closer to the microphone on the console. 

“Tell your squadron to have more care, Xu Chu,” he said. “The moon is terraformed territory; if the ships damage the shielding that keeps the people alive, then this battle will have no meaning.”

“Will the death of my brother’s people not be a boon for you?”

Carefully, Mengde pressed the button to switch off the microphone. He turned his head to look at Guan Yu out of the corner of his eyes. “Do you believe such tactics to be becoming of our Emperor?”

“No,” Guan Yu said. “But I know very little of the Emperor, and I have heard a great deal about you.”

Now _here_ was the famed honesty; Mengde had wondered if it had gone the same way as the beard. 

Lifting his eyes to meet Guan Yu’s gaze, he said, “The Emperor rests in Luoyang, back on Earth, but I am here, and here on this ship my men have lived.” He waved a hand around him, gesturing to the great flagship; the floating city of Xu. “All of us know of the need to protect our homes, and the desperate loneliness of having home as nothing but a battlefield. We are not so cruel that we will inflict such a punishment upon those whose hands have never touched a weapon.”

Guan Yu’s eyes narrowed. He opened his mouth, closed it, and jerked his head to the side. “What is this ship’s name?”

“Xu,” Mengde gave him easily. “But I do not believe that was the question on your lips.”

“What know you of my thoughts?” Guan Yu fired back.

 _Plenty_ , Mengde thought. _The darkness of your eyes is the ink of your heart’s desires_.

“You are not a man well-versed in the art of prevarication,” he said instead. “That, General, is a virtue.”

Thinning his lips even further, Guan Yu folded his hands behind his back. His shoulders stiffening, weighing down so much that it seemed he was once more carrying his glaive, burdened by his devotion to his duty.

“This ship catches my footsteps in ways I have never heard,” Guan Yu said eventually. “I hear no breaths except mine.”

“My men are at battle,” Mengde said, amusement seeping into his voice. He waved a hand towards the screen. “I apologise for the lack of company and hospitality. This is, I assure you, merely temporary.” 

“No,” Guan Yu shook his head. “That is not…” He hesitated.

“ _Why_?” The word burst out of him with such force that it turned his knuckles white. “There is little… I have…”

Mengde stood from his chair. Reaching out, he allowed his hand to hover barely an inch above Guan Yu’s cheek. Guan Yu stared at him, and did not move away.

“Your heart aches for the sound of people, General,” Mengde said, voice barely above a whisper. “For words and laughter, for joy and sorrow… for the sounds of a home.”

Slowly, those thick lashes lowered.

“Europa has strong, whipping winds.” Guan Yu’s voice was soft, too, barely more than a wisp against Mengde’s palm. “Their strength is such that they have scoured the sands smooth, and stripped people down to their bones.” 

One of Jupiter’s moons; the smallest that could still be seen from Earth with the naked eye. Mengde’s breath hitched at the exquisite gift now in his hands.

“The sand holds on to nothing,” Guan Yu continued, his eyes far away now. “Water slips through its grains to the centre. Warmth flees until we are surrounded by ice.”

Years ago, before the current Emperor came to the throne, Mengde had heard that Europa had been emptied; its terraforming systems proved too inadequate for the harshness of its conditions. The news that came from Jupiter spoke of Europa having turned pale, all of its previous rust washed away by the bones that laid upon its sands.

Skittering his fingers above the line of Guan Yu’s jaw, he looked at him. “I have not the rich wet soils of Earth to offer you, for it is not mine to give,” he said. “But this,” he slammed his foot down, and the metal floor shrieked. 

In civilisations long overwhelmed by theirs, there were towers made for no purpose other than to hold bells, large enough for their tolling to heard throughout the cities. Those bells surely sounded like this: loud and clamouring, driving deep beneath the skin.

“It holds sound well,” Mengde said once the ringing had faded enough for words. “If you have no home, then this can be yours.” 

Guan Yu tipped his head to the side. His smooth cheek brushed, light, against the tips of Mengde’s fingers. “You have emptied your ship,” he said, and his eyes on Mengde were bright with uncertainty. “You now offer it to me.”

“Yes,” Mengde said. Only a fool would deny his own actions when he had deliberately made them obvious.

“I make for a poor concubine,” Guan Yu said.

Mengde wanted to laugh. He wanted to say: _Is that all you think I want you for?_

But Guan Yu was not finished. “You have doomed yourself to failure, your lordship.” The first smile he offered Mengde was full of bitterness, twisted at the edges. “You admire me for my loyalty, but you wish for me to betray.”

Turning his wrist, Mengde moved his hand downwards. The tips of his fingers swept, light, over Guan Yu’s neck, over the knot over his throat. “You have a mark here, in the shade of blood.” He felt the hitch in Guan Yu’s breath as, slowly, the colours started to fill back in. “What is it for?”

“A reminder,” Guan Yu said. His eyes fell close as he tipped his head back. The skin of his throat felt so thin, so fragile, on a man so strong. “For my blood to not run too hot.”

“Poorly made,” Mengde shook his head. “It could not discern between desire and rage.”

“They are the same,” Guan Yu’s eyes were squeezed shut now as Mengde wrapped his fingers around his throat, his thumb rubbing against the strip of darkening scarlet. “Both are distractions from my duty.”

“Was the ink earned?” 

“No.” The single word twisted upwards, high-pitched, as Mengde’s nail scraped over the skin. “It was offered, and I accepted it freely.”

Mengde smiled. This man for whom honour had caged… “As freely as you accept my touches, now?”

“I—” Guan Yu started.

“As freely as you will accept the curl of my tongue upon your name?”

“My name?” Those dark eyes fluttered back open, and widened when he realised just how close Mengde had leaned in.

Smiling, Mengde tilted his head. His breath ghosted over the curve of one perfectly-shaped ear as he said, “ _Yunchang_.”

He had wanted to use that name for so long, and it tasted so sweet on his lips. The sweetness of dawn’s first drops of dew beading on chrysanthemum petals.

His hand reached behind Yunchang, splaying upon the small of his back to steel his spine. He turned his head to press his mouth against Yunchang’s jaw, teeth scraping down the stubbled jaw until he could feel the racing pulse point beneath his lips.

“Tell me, General,” he murmured into that pale, flawless skin, “do you call the acceptance of these touches to be _free_?”

An army surrounding his brother’s home. An emptied ship. The blood of men on Mengde’s hands, on Yunchang’s own. Honour had spun its web so tightly around this man’s limbs that the threads had sunk deep inside, weaving around the nerves until Yunchang danced only to its beat. Acupuncture needles slipped under the skin.

“Your lordship,” Yunchang breathed.

“If you will not call me by my courtesy name, General,” Mengde said, turning his head and mouthing against the skin underneath Guan Yu’s ear. “Then at least use ‘ _my lord_.’”

Was the respect Mengde gave to him not more than sufficient for a lord to afford his subjects?

“My lord.” Yunchang’s voice juddered on the first word. “I… I do not understand the meaning of your question.” 

“Look,” Mengde said. He leaned back, and tilted Yunchang’s head back towards the screen. Most of Sun Quan’s ships had retreated by now, and the moon was now surrounded by ships coloured black and silver. 

“You stand there now, and do not push me away, for the same reason you have bent your knees, General,” he continued. He brushed the back of his fingers over Yunchang’s cheek, and noted the darkening of those eyes. 

His hand travelled down to Yunchang’s neck. The thickness of his fingers, and the broadness of his hand, was barely enough to cover the strip of red.

“There are limits to my own selfishness,” Mengde said, “and that is acting like a fool.” He tightened his grip, just briefly. “To take against the desire of the taken is nothing but sheer folly.” 

Yunchang’s eyes flashed. But he did not look away.

“The sight of chains destroys beauty,” Mengde continued. “Whether it is the beauty of porcelain,” he scraped his thumb’s nail over the curve of Yunchang’s cheek, “or that of an unsheathed blade… the destruction it brings, General, is the same.”

Tipping his head up, Yunchang said, “There are chains made of gold and silver. Made not to shackle, but as a vow.”

Blinking, Mengde chased away the image of Yunchang’s pale skin draped in gold, and nothing else. He shifted the hand not on that slim throat instead, splaying his fingers over that strong chest.

The heart beneath the cage of bones beat shallow and rapid.

“But I will rather have you free,” Mengde said. “The sound of your footsteps will ease my heart far more, General, if I do not hear the echoes of the shackles that drag behind you.”

Yunchang’s shoulders shuddered as he leaned towards the touch of Mengde’s hands. “You are,” he paused, his tongue darting out to lick across those full lips.

“You are yourself bound, my lord.”

It was with great effort that Mengde did not give into the urge to laugh. Yunchang, having never met the Emperor, would not understand the ludicrousness of that boy-child having chained one such as Mengde himself.

He did not speak. Seconds ticked away while he waited.

Until: “My lord.” Wenyuan’s voice.

Without taking his eyes off of Yunchang, he reached out and pressed the button on the console to switch the microphone back on. “Speak, Wenyuan,” he said.

“Most of our ships have landed,” Wenyuan reported. “However, Sun Quan’s forces have gotten better ground on the fields, and right now, we are—” 

“Send me the coordinates on your landing spots and hold your positions,” Mengde interrupted him. The tension had snapped right back into Yunchang’s spine, just as he expected. “Send the men who have not landed back to Xu to guard it.”

“My lord,” Wenyuan said, hesitation ringing sharp in his voice. “It is a battlefield here.”

“The ground upon which Liu Bei stands,” Mengde said, voice level, “is ground good enough for my feet.” Before Wenyuan could protest further, he switched off the connection. 

He turned back to look at Yunchang. The man had bowed his head again, hands clasped together in front of him. “My lord,” he said. The title sounded so terribly different in his voice, so much sweeter than Wenyuan’s dull familiarity.

“Come,” Mengde said, and held out a hand.

Yunchang’s fingers were long and slim. Mengde stroked his thumb over the knuckles – one moment of indulgence – before he pulled the warrior out of the command deck and down into the hallways.

As they made twists and turns in the purposeful labyrinth of Xu, Mengde could hear the question hovering around Yunchang. He did not answer in, instead walking faster, and tightening his grip on that hand in his.

They stopped in front of a doorway. Double doors, with wrought iron decorating the sides and top, where wood touched the metal of the frame and ceiling, stood in front of them. Mengde pressed his thumb against his print, and breathed out towards a designated spot. Behind him, he could feel realisation slowly twined around Yunchang’s spine.

The armoury was almost entirely empty. Letting go of Yunchang’s hand, Mengde headed inside. He took his own broadsword from where it rested against the wall, swinging the strap over his shoulders, without stopping in his tracks.

“Here,” he said, and lifted the heavy glaive from its stand at the very back of the room. He swung it around, the wood slamming hard against his palms, before he lifted it to Yunchang.

“My lord,” Yunchang said, his eyes wide. Mengde smiled. 

Even Wenyuan had protested against his orders, though everyone had subsided when Mengde pointed out that he could have carried out the repairs by himself, without need of the soldiers who also serve as craftsmen. 

He had insisted because he knew that, one day, Yunchang would be made into a legend, and he would not be the man who spoiled the heroic image he would strike with his glaive.

“Take it,” Mengde said when Yunchang remained standing there, frozen with eyes wide-staring. His smile widened, briefly. “You will need it to protect your brother’s home.”

Slowly, Yunchang’s hands rose. His fingers wrapped over the staff. His pale skin was set into stark contrast with the spots where the light peach wood darkened; at the edges where the splinters had been knitted back into solidity.

“We do not carry peach wood on the ship,” Mengde said. “Cedar was the closest I could find.”

Peach, the symbol of the vows of brotherhood Yunchang had made; cedar, for the constancy of lovers. 

The up-curving lines at the edges of Yunchang’s eyes told him that he understood Mengde perfectly.

Reaching back, Mengde drew out his sword. The blade glinted underneath the fluorescent white of the armoury.

“Shall we, General?”

***

The battle was over: the moon’s white sands had been stained red, and its flat landscapes were ruined now by the pockmarks of bloodied and broken bodies. Behind Mengde, men were starting to bustle around, cooling down from the heat of battle into the mundanities of war as they set up tents and started to gather the injured. He would attend to them later.

Right now, his attention was entirely on the man who stood amidst the corpses. 

“You will mourn them far more than even their wives,” he said.

Slowly, the long glaive lowered, and the head tipped up. When those dark eyes met his own, it was his Yunchang who was looking at him, not the fearsome Guan-gong.

But the strip of red on his neck was still there. The sight of it twisted Mengde’s lips. 

Liu Bei had the daring to choose the same character for ‘virtue’ to be part of his courtesy name as Mengde himself did, and yet he did not even make an attempt to live up to it.

Dismissing the thought of that scoundrel, Mengde walked forward. Yunchang’s feet seemed to have grown roots: he stood frozen there. The selfish, Mengde knew, would not have seen his tremors, or the stark whiteness of his knuckles. 

When Mengde reached out, the skin of Yunchang’s throat fluttered against his fingers like the weak wings of hummingbirds caught mid-flight. Yunchang's eyes fell shut, and despite the stiffening of his spine, the blade of the glaive slammed hard into the moon’s sand. Clumps of brown and grey sprayed upwards, terribly ugly.

“All men,” Yunchang said, voice so soft Mengde felt more than heard it, “deserve to be mourned.”

Mengde made a soft noise, as if in assent. “But one who takes all the grief upon his shoulders,” he scraped his calluses over the bulge on Yunchang's throat, then upwards to feel the captured-lighting of his pulse, “threatens to only break himself.”

“Do you doubt the strength of my back?” The last word twisted off into incoherence as Yunchang leaned towards Mengde's hand, now scraping the edges of the red, red tattoo.

No,” Mengde said. He leaned in. With his mouth against the blood-stark colour, he said, “I merely admire its curves when in repose.”

“You have never seen it such,” Yunchang denied, but his voice was a mere breathy whisper. His eyes fluttered close, and Mengde took it as invitation to splay his hand against the small of his back. “We stand amidst the men.”

“There is no need to worry for me,” Mengde said, amused. It was true: his men knew of his proclivities, and those who suspected that he mobilised the army for the sake of his lusts would not be mollified if he restrained himself. They would see his desire, nonetheless, because they wished to see it.

Mengde was not a leader who led by examples of morality. He left such ham-handed attempts to the likes of Liu Bei and Sun Quan.

“But you… Yunchang,” he curled his tongue around the name, made his breath into a caress, “will they not think that your time in my company has corrupted you?”

Yunchang tipped his head down. Mengde’s breath caught in his throat at the sight of mirth – _mirth_ , from a man who rarely smiled! – in those dark eyes.

“You are an honourable man, my lord,” the warrior said. His hand seemed to reach out to Mengde, and then dropped back to his side. “Despite your reputation.”

“Ah, so I have succeeded,” Mengde said, raising an eyebrow. “I have made you think better of me.”

Shaking his head, Yunchang smiled. “I am not a man who judge by reputation alone,” he said.

Mengde looked at him. Then he deliberately took a step back, unwinding his arm from around Yunchang’s strong, slim waist. The recycled air of the moon hit his nose, cleansing too quickly the sweetness of Yunchang’s sweat and the blood he had streaked over his face.

He allowed himself to smile when Yunchang leaned in; when the thin, fragile skin of his throat jumped at the sudden lack of touch.

The red was fading. 

“Here,” Mengde said. “Look.”

Liu Bei’s men had set up camp outside their own city – Jiangxia – creating a circle around his walls that – surely coincidentally if he asked the man himself – blocked Mengde’s army from entering the city. The flag of Shu was flying high on the tops of the walls and the watchtowers, so many that they practically covered the sight of the Earth in the distance. 

A man on a hovercraft was riding towards the gates. There was, Mengde noted, a bundle tucked up against his chest. Beside him, Yunchang jerked, and murmured, “Zilong.”

Zhao Yun. Liu Bei’s most loyal general. Mengde tilted his head, and caught sight of one of his men out of his eyes.

“Chen Ji,” he called out. The man jerked, and his eyes widened when Mengde crooked his fingers towards him.

“My- my lord?”

“I need your bow,” Mengde said. He knew the reason for the soldier’s surprise – he was naught but one of the archers, and likely did not realise that Mengde meant it when he said that he knew the names of all men under his command – but there was no time for reassurance. Zhao Yun was nearing Liu Bei.

When he had the bow and arrow, Mengde aimed. Zhao Yun had jumped from the hovercraft straight to his knees.

Yunchang’s hand on his elbow. “What are you _doing_?” he hissed. Zhao Yun had raised the bundle in his hands, and Liu Bei was taking it from him.

“Saving your brother from an unnecessary act, General,” Mengde said, and fired. 

Just as Liu Bei raised the pile of clothes over his head, about to dash it against the ground or something equally stupid, the arrow pinned his sleeve against the wall. There was a sudden commotion, roars from Liu Bei’s generals, the loudest being the red-faced Zhang Fei right beside him.

But, loudest of all, was the cry. A child’s cry, loud and piercing.

Mengde raised the bow and arrow up in a salute. “Liu Bei!” He made sure to raise his voice such that the entire camp could hear him, and smiled as heads turned to stare at him.

“You once said, ‘Women and children are like clothes, and brothers like limbs,’” he continued. “But there must be better ways to appreciate the loyalty of your men than to kill the child he fought to rescue.”

Yunchang was very still next to him. Mengde bent himself from the waist, but kept his eyes on Liu Bei’s figure even as he bowed. Barely curving his spine; far too shallow.

“My lord,” Yunchang started. Mengde turned to him, and softened the edges of his smile. He tossed the bow back in Chen Ji’s direction, and extended the hand that fired it to Yunchang.

“May I escort you back to your city, General?”

“It is my brother’s city,” Yunchang said, voice soft and hand steady as he placed it in Mengde’s, “It is not mine.” 

***

Liu Bei’s estate in his home city of Jiangxia had obviously been made according to the old Earth traditions: carved statues decorating the entrance, wood and paper doors, and a garden with a pavilion overlooking a small running stream. Mengde bent down, dipping the mouth of the kettle into the water until it was half-filled. 

When he straightened to place the kettle on its faux-wooden stove, he made sure to allow the silver silk of the embroidery catch the pale, diluted light of the sun that came through the atmosphere-controlling glass above.

“This is Anxi province’s best _tie guan yin_ ,” he declared, proffering a small bag from the insides of his sleeves with a flourish. “The magistrate had made the latest batch into a gift for the Emperor, and His Majesty entrusted some of it to me.”

“I have heard of Anxi’s _tie guan yin_ ,” a soft voice murmured, words half-catching with awe. “It is said to be one of the best teas in the world.”

A woman sat beside Liu Bei. Her hands were hidden in the sleeves of her robes: layers of red and gold half-hidden by a large cloak of deep blues and greens. Still, Mengde did not need the colours to identify her: he could see her bloodline in her jawline and the shape of her eyes.

“The very best, in this lowly one’s opinion,” Mengde said. He inclined his head towards her before turning his attention back downwards. Unlacing the bag, he withdrew a handful of the curled leaves. He carefully dropped them, leaf by leaf, into the porcelain teapot in front of him.

“Good tea is best made with the water of a running stream,” Sun Quan’s sister said. She tilted her head towards her new husband. “Is that why you have suggested this pavilion for our meeting, my lord?”

Liu Bei shook his head. “You deserve cool, fresh air, lady, after all you had been through,” he said. His lips thinned into a line. “Though, unfortunately, our water is still reclaimed, and not the quality of the mountain streams that Earth’s tea calls for.” 

Baiting Liu Bei, Mengde thought, was as easy as drawing a mongrel into play. He carefully did not allow his eyes to slide towards Yunchang, though the man was seated right by his side.

The kettle beeped when the water boiled. Waving his hand to clear the stream, Mengde poured some of the water into the pot before he lifted it, swirling, and dumped the water behind him onto the grass that covered the ground around the pavilion.

“I daresay your water is sweet enough that there is little difference in the scent,” Mengde said. He tilted the pot in the direction of Sun Quan’s sister. “Would you like to test my words, ma’am?”

The woman raised an eyebrow. “You need not use such formality with me,” she pointed out.

Mengde smiled. “I do not know your name,” he lied through his teeth.

Standing, Sun Quan’s sister placed a hand on her chest, and gave him a bow just deep enough for a warlord’s wife to give to another warlord. “Sun Shangxiang,” she provided. “Hailing from the stars of Wu.”

To call Mars a _star_ was truly overstating its significance. Mengde schooled his expression into surprise as he turned to Liu Bei. “You have proven your brilliance as a strategist again,” he said, deliberately leaving out the title. “In one move, you have made Sun Quan lose the lady,” he gave her a deeper bow than her station and his warranted, his eyes fixed upon Liu Bei, “and cripple his army.” 

“赔了夫人又折兵. That is a line that will be recorded the annals of history.” Dark eyes lifted from where they had been fixed upon the carvings of the stone table. “You live up to your reputation of being a man of words.”

The lack of a title hovered in the air. Mengde tilted his head. “That is a clever insult, Yunchang,” Mengde said, not even bothering to place emphasis on the name he used. “Everyone knows that ‘a man of words’ is merely a pretty euphemism for being silver-tongued.” He deliberately lifted his sleeves, showing off the silver of the threads, as he picked up the kettle.

Yunchang’s eyes narrowed. But honour had him held too tight, and he said, “I do not mean to imply that you are a liar.” An overly-heavy pause. 

“My lord.”

Liu Bei’s lips thinned even further. His knuckles were turning white from the tight, tight grip he had on the edge of the stone table. “I will pass the compliments about strategy to Kongming,” he said, mentioning Zhuge Liang, his famed advisor. “The plans were his, not mine.”

Of course; that did not need to be said. Liu Bei could not strategise himself out of a paper bag if his life, and the lives of his men, depended on it. He would not even have a leg to stand on if not for the capable men he had somehow gathered by his side. 

Mengde smiled. He poured water into the teapot and closed the lid with a soft _click_. Then he stood up and inclined his head towards Liu Bei with his hand over his heart. “My compliments to you, then, for your leadership.”

“Such talk bores me,” Sun Shangxiang declared. She stood up in a flurry of robes, one pale hand on Liu Bei’s shoulder. Less than a day as his wife, and she already knew Liu Bei was a dog that needed to be leashed. “If you will excuse me, my lords, I have duties to attend to.”

“Stay for a moment more, ma’am,” Mengde said, tipping his head up to meet her eyes. “You have not tasted the _tie guan yin_ yet.”

“Perhaps I will give it a miss, this time around,” she said, and gave a demure smile that did not suit the strong edges of her brows.

“You _must_ ,” he insisted. “Earth’s tea steeped in the moon’s water…” He picked up the teapot and leaned over the table, pouring the first cup for her, holding onto her gaze all the while. “It is an apt metaphor, ma’am.”

Fire flashed in her eyes: she clearly understood what he meant. Her marriage to Liu Bei was, after all, meant to be a symbol of the alliance between Shu and Wu. To join forces against the man who was now offering her tea; the man who had defeated her brother, and whose men had slaughtered her brother’s forces. 

The man to whom her new husband owed his life, though he would not see it that way.

A single moment, and she understood all that, and showed him she did with only the briefest narrowing of her eyes. Mengde almost shook his head: here was another by Liu Bei’s side who was clearly far superior to him. 

She sat back down. Her robes settled back gracefully around her, and her sleeves did not touch the table as she picked up a cup to sip. “It is,” she said, voice terribly level, “a good tea.”

“Shangxiang,” Liu Bei said. His eyes were fixed upon Mengde, a solid point of hatred that was still too weak to burn. “Please visit Lady Mi to understand your new duties.”

“My lord,” she said, and stepped backwards away from the table. As she turned, that blue-green cloak of hers flew up, revealing the reds and golds beneath, flurrying. Mengde stifled another smile, and wondered if Sun Quan had _truly_ lost his sister, after all.

The sounds of her footsteps faded away. Mengde poured the tea, letting the sound of water hitting porcelain join the quiet rushing of the false stream. 

When he sat the teapot down, Yunchang drank. Liu Bei’s hands remained curled around the edge of the table. Mengde did not look at him as he said, “The gifts of an Emperor should not be wasted.”

“What,” Liu Bei stood up, but, once again, he was far too slow: Yunchang was already on his feet, and headed over his side of the table. Yunchang had already dropped to one knee, and lowered his head.

“Elder brother,” Yunchang said. “May I beg leave of your service for three months?”

“Yunchang,” Liu Bei said. He had stood, and his knees were half-bent as he leaned down towards his brother. “What do you mean?”

Lifting up his head, Yunchang met Liu Bei’s eyes calmly. “Lord Cao has granted me a great boon,” he said, voice even and soft. “One I wish to repay with my service to him.”

Once more, Yunchang sought to cover up for Liu Bei’s mistakes and failings. With but a few words, he had taken the burden of the deaths of Mengde’s men from Liu Bei’s shoulders and Mengde’s own, and strapped it upon his own already too-stiff back. 

“It was Yunchang who begged for me to send men to relieve yours,” Mengde said. He took a sip of his tea, and let his eyes linger on the long column of Yunchang’s neck. “He sacrificed his honour and pride for your sake.”

“This is not a sacrifice,” Yunchang said. He did not seem to have notice Mengde’s words, but a flush was slowly creeping up his neck. “This is righteous, elder brother.”

Mengde set down his cup. “There is little difference in your view of both,” he said, turning his eyes to Yunchang and utterly ignoring Liu Bei’s presence. “Would you deny that you often mistake duty for desire?”

Eyes lidding, Yunchang shook his head. “It is righteous,” he repeated.

“Service given for the sake of mending an honour untarnished,” Mengde said, “is not service that will please me.”

“Have I mistaken your desire, my lord?” Yunchang asked. “Have you not wished for my service?”

“You have not.” Standing up, Mengde walked over to where Yunchang was still kneeling on the ground. “But you…” He paused, thinking for a moment.

“Have you heard the legend of how the _tie guan yin_ was named, Yunchang?” His eyes finally slid towards Liu Bei. “Liu Bei.”

Liu Bei’s fingers twitched at the implied insult. A muscle at his jaw twitched, and he jerked his head to the side. On the floor, Yunchang shook his head.

It seemed honour was a far less rigid cage than was self-righteousness.

“Once, in years long past, there lived a tea-picker named Wei in Anxi,” Mengde began, picking up one of the cups and running his fingers over the rim. “Every day on his work to the fields, he would pass by a temple. The temple was in terrible condition, and the iron Goddess of Mercy within it was even worse: rust covered every inch of her surface, and she looked on the verge of breaking.”

“I don’t see—” Liu Bei started.

“One day, Wei decided that he could not stand by and do nothing anymore,” Mengde continued, overriding Liu Bei’s interruption. “He decided to try to clean up the temple, and polish the statue himself. But he was poor, and he was only one man, and there were only two hours each day that he could spare.”

Mengde took a sip of his tea. When he met Yunchang’s eyes over the rim, he could see the realisation slowly sinking in.

“The efforts took him over a decade, but one day, Wei stepped back from his work. He had worked through the night, and it was dawn. As the sun rose, the iron Goddess of Mercy glimmered with lights in such splendour that it took his breath away. At the moment, he realised that his ten years of work was worth this sight. If he must spend another decade for another glimpse, he thought, he would gladly do so.”

Liu Bei’s lips were thin again. Mengde drained the last of his tea. The _clack_ of the earthenware on the stone table was very loud around them.

“Because he was so tired, Wei fell asleep then, in the temple. The Goddess of Mercy came to him then, a sight so beautiful he could not find the words to describe it for the rest of his life, and showed him to a cave behind the temple. When he woke, he went to the cave and found a small tea shoot, struggling.” He paused, and then shrugged.

“The rest of the story is clear enough.” 

“My lord,” Yunchang choked out. There were stars in his night-dark eyes.

“Some says that Wei spent a decade in piety, and he was rewarded for his efforts with the tea shoot the Goddess granted him,” Mengde continued, his gaze fixed upon Yunchang’s face, upon those tremulous lashes that cast such long shadows upon his pale cheeks. “I prefer to think that he worked for naught but the sake of beauty, and the shoot he received was less a prize than the sight of the iron Goddess of Mercy in the height of her beauty.”

He bent his knee. Right there, looking into those dark eyes he would never tire of describing, he reached out a hand. Yunchang let out a shuddering breath as Mengde’s fingers touched his cheek, and tilted his face towards it, his eyes once more fluttering shut.

“Three months,” Liu Bei said. The sound of his voice made Yunchang jerk, his lids snapping back open. But Mengde held his gaze, and refused to let him look away.

“After three months, you must return to me.” Liu Bei paused. “Second brother.”

Such an inelegant way to remind a man of his chains and cage.

“Yes, elder brother,” Yunchang said. He did not seem to be able to look away from Mengde’s face. “I understand.”

Liu Bei turned on his heel and left the pavilion. His tea still sat there on the table, steam coiling upwards as it cooled untouched.

A waste. As much as one of the garden. As much as one of the entire estate. At least Mengde knew to shape his private indulgences around the frame of bolstering his men’s morale.

Rocking back on the balls of his feet, Mengde stood. He held out a hand. This time, Yunchang took it and allowed Mengde to lift him to his feet.

“I will not ask you to be dishonourable,” Mengde said. “But I am an impatient man. I am a selfish man. And I will not waste time.”

Yunchang looked at him for a long moment, silent. Then, with the deliberation that Mengde was starting to name as entirely his own, he took Mengde’s hand with both of his own. He pressed the knuckles first to his forehead, then to his lips.

His eyes were so large, so dark, above Mengde’s rough, brush-callused hand. “You claim that I often mistake duty for desire, my lord,” he said, voice soft. “So here is a question.” He paused, and licked his lips.

“May I call you by your courtesy name?”

For a single moment, the length of time it took for a drop of water to travel from a leaf’s tip to the ground, Mengde could not breathe. He who stood almost above all in the universe, he who referred to himself by his courtesy name in his own head so he would not forget its existence…

Even the Emperor called him ‘Lord Cao’ unless he wished to make a swaggering point. Even then, it was ‘Cao Mengde,’ in full.

“It will,” his voice broke. He cleared his throat, and pressed his free hand to Yunchang’s cheek. “It will be an honour.”

When Yunchang smiled for him, it was wide, lopsidedly clumsy, and so terribly sweet.

They stood there on the stone of the pavilion of Liu Bei’s estate, of Liu Bei’s city, on Liu Bei’s moon. They stood there and Mengde took Yunchang’s face with both hands, and he knew that he would want none of these half-hearted imitations.

The only thing he wished to take from Liu Bei had already given himself freely to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Xu is the name of the capital of Wei, with Wei being the Cao Cao's kingdom in the very near future after Emperor Xian is dead. Jiangxia is the town that Liu Bei hid in while he was on the run from Cao Cao, which happened around the time The Lost Bladesman was set. (Yes, Cao Cao's kingdom being named Wei is why I chose _tie guan yin's_ legend. It's not the same Wei, though.)
> 
> There really is a story about the origins of _tie guan yin_ tea involving a broken-down temple, an iron statue of the Goddess of Mercy, and a man named Wei. All other details are entirely made up. Look, it’s Cao Cao; don’t expect him to actually be honest. 
> 
> Chen Ji is literally a random soldier. His name in Chinese is 陈机, which is... a joke that I'm not going to explain. It’s kind of in the same vein as the jokes in the chapter titles.
> 
> 赔了夫人又折兵: I explained it in the fic itself adequately, I hope. But anyway, it's a phrase that's shorthand for a double gamble that was lost.
> 
> If you can’t tell, I really fucking hate Liu Bei.


	3. 操官 (cao guan), “to fuck an official”

Xu could be reached in a matter of minutes, but Mengde would not leave his men when they were so close to Liu Bei’s territory and Sun Quan’s forces still littered the moon like the festering sores they were. Besides, Wenyuan had the men set up a large tent for Mengde’s sole use – well, as command centre as well, but mostly for his own use – and Mengde could not bear to have them waste their efforts. 

At the doorway of the tent, he stopped Yunchang with a hand brushing over his shoulder. He bent down, and drew out another small silk pouch from his sleeves. Lifting part of the tent’s cloth – nylon, but with the ropes used to hold it up made of hemp – he scooped up some of the moon’s dust with his hands and poured it into the bag.

“Earth’s silk with moon dust,” he said, giving Yunchang a wry, lopsided smile as he handed the pouch over. “A reminder.”

Yunchang took the pouch, the paleness of his fingers stark against the black silk. He cocked his head to the side. “You have me,” he said.

Stifling down the shudder at the matter-of-fact tone in those words, Mengde shook his head. He took Yunchang by the elbow and brought him inside the tent, closing and buttoning the flap before he cupped that beautiful face with both hands. Yunchang’s mouth parted when Mengde ran his thumb over the plush bottom lip, and his breath shook.

“For three months you are mine,” Mengde said. He traced the arch of one dark-inked brow with his fingertips. “You are borrowed, Yunchang, and I am greedy. I am selfish.” His thumb moved downwards, right where the strip of red was starting to darken once more on that long throat. “I want to have you wholly.”

Those lips curved up once more, and stars burst into being in those shadow-dark eyes. Yunchang’s hand was hesitant, half-stuttering with his touches. “Be careful to not doom yourself with your desires,” he warned with smiling mouth. “For is it not an old precept that too much desire is the pathway that leads to the road to hell?”

Mengde laughed. Carefully, he leaned forward, touching his forehead to Yunchang’s. When those lids fluttered shut, when Yunchang leaned towards him, Mengde’s heart roared in a way that he never thought it capable of.

“There is one thing I can give to you,” Yunchang said, voice no louder than a whisper. His hand touched the nape of Mengde’s neck. “Just one thing you can have of me, which no one else ever would.” 

Despite himself, Mengde’s blood ran hotter and faster in his veins. He turned his head, and brushed his lips over Yunchang’s temple. This close, the scent of his skin reminded Mengde of those mountain streams that the man himself had never once seen.

“I have never done this before.”

Mengde froze. He reared back despite himself, control fast slipping out of his hands, and he stared at Yunchang; fixed his eyes on that averted gaze before he took that smooth chin with his fingers and turned Yunchang’s face back towards him.

“Never,” Mengde repeated, disbelief so thick in his voice that he was choking himself. “A man as beautiful as you are…”

Yunchang shrugged. “A warm bed matters much less than duty and honour.”

“Do the old precepts not say that duty and honour involved the carrying on of your line?” Mengde cocked his head to the side. “Some attempt at it, at least.”

Leaning back, Yunchang stared at him. His spine had gone stiff, though his shoulders were still relaxed and he did not push away Mengde’s touch.

“There is no honour in the use of another for the sake of fulfilment of your own duty,” he said, firm. Then, as afterthought: “My lord.”

“Mengde.” A soft correction. He shook his head, and then brushed the tip of his finger over the curve of one cheek. “I can still barely believe…”

Yunchang snorted, shaking his head. “You are unmarried as well,” he said. A clear hesitation; the dart of pink tongue over plush lips. “Mengde.”

The shudder that went down his spine at the sound of his name in that voice nearly caught Mengde by surprise. He stifled it, and let out a breath through his teeth. “My preferences make the idea of fulfilling my duty to my line laughable,” he said, forcing his voice into wryness. “Other than that… I am a selfish, capricious man.”

“Have I not told you that you are a man of honour?” Yunchang’s voice was raised, making Mengde blink. “Will you not believe me?”

Laughing, Mengde took his hands. He folded those long fingers along the length of his own, and raised it up to press a soft kiss to the knuckles. “You seek honour in all things,” he said. “For your eyes have been shaped by compassion.” He brushed his thumb over the corners of those eyes. “Even when you look upon one made of nothing but shadow, you still trace the shapes of worthiness within the muck.”

Fingers splayed, he slid the hand curled around Yunchang’s upwards. He felt the heat of Yunchang’s body, the corded muscles strong even through cloth, until he had reached his neck.

“My reasons for disallowing you to come to me out of sacrifice or duty had naught to do with my honour,” he continued. “The reason is far more self-serving: if you are unwilling, I will not be able to touch you so freely.”

He turned his head, and pressed his lips against the brilliant red of Liu Bei’s mark on Yunchang’s neck. “If I am to have you, I must have you wholly.”

Strange: Mengde had always prided himself on never repeating.

“You can,” Yunchang said. He arched his body towards Mengde. “And the marks you leave will be the first to touch this skin.”

Mengde closed his eyes. He breathed in Yunchang’s scent, the mountain spring mixed in with the scent of rain-soaked leaves. A man born in a cold desert who smelled of water sweet and clean. His hand splayed between Yunchang’s shoulderblades, dragging downwards to catch his nails on the knobs of his spine.

“Will you let me have you tonight, Yunchang?” he asked. “Will you let me have you here?”

Here: on these sands, on this moon, with spectre of Liu Bei’s city and all that would eventually draw Yunchang away from him in the distance. Covered by the nylon now; nylon that served, too, as a reminder that Yunchang’s roots did not belong to Earth; did not and could not twine around Mengde’s own.

“Yes,” Yunchang breathed. “But you will have to lead me.”

Smiling against Yunchang’s skin, Mengde shook his head. “You say that the marks I leave on your skin will be the first.” _The deepest_ , he did not say, but he knew Yunchang heard from how his pulse sped up beneath his lips. “Will you lie back, and simply allow me?”

“Allow you,” Yunchang said, sounding confused. He brushed his hand carefully over Mengde’s jaw; a request that was immediately acceded to. “What do you mean?”

Mengde weighed words against actions. But before his mind could fully make the decision, his hands had already moved: fingers skittered over the waist of Yunchang’s robes, slipping beneath the folds to find the ties. He tugged them loose and, when Yunchang did not push him away, he slipped the first layer of cloth off Yunchang’s shoulders to let them pool down on the nylon covering that shielded them from the moon’s dust.

Yunchang’s under-robes were thin, and a light grey. When Mengde slid his fingers over the cloth, he realised it was Earth’s cotton, not nylon. One of those provisions offered to Yunchang on the flagship of Eastern Han; on Mengde’s Xu. 

Here: on these sands, on this moon, Yunchang had been wearing Mengde’s clothes all along. He felt desire rush through him so quickly that his head spun.

Swallowing hard, he took Yunchang’s hand again. “Come,” he said, and led him towards the partitioned part of the tent that served as his private rooms. There was only an army cot; a flimsy metal thing covered by an even flimsier mattress that was filled with air. 

For the first time, Mengde regretted his insistence that he slept and ate in the same conditions as his men even as he might dress and drink differently. Yunchang deserved goose down and silk; deserved to be laid out on one of the rich beds in the Emperor’s palace in Luoyang, on black sheets stitched intricately with dark grey and silver embroidery that would dull in contrast to his golden skin.

“Mengde,” Yunchang said. He bent his knees of his own accord, and sat himself down on the bed. His white teeth glinted underneath the bare fluorescent as he bit down on his lip. “I… What must I do?”

“Feel,” Mengde answered, and pulled loose the ties of the under-robes. Then he sank his hand into Yunchang’s long hair, tugging on the single cord that held the tail back away from that fine-boned face. When Yunchang’s eyes closed as the strands brushed over them, Mengde splayed both hands over his broad chest. He slid them sideways until the cotton sprawled upon the cot; a softer surface than the roughness of the plastic mattress itself.

“All I need for you to is to feel,” he continued. Leaning down now, he pressed kisses upon Yunchang’s jaw, moving downwards to his neck. “The heat of my touches upon you. Let them mark your skin. Let them mark your mind.”

Yunchang’s hips stuttered against the mattress, making the cot squeak. “I will not forget,” he said. “A part of my mind will forever be marked as yours.”

Closing his eyes, Mengde nodded. “Yes,” he said.

He traced the lines of Yunchang’s body with his lips, his hands. The lines and curves of his shoulders, the corded strength of his arms, the fragile bones of his wrists and hands. The length of his fingers, then back upwards again, following the lines of his ribs, lingering there to feel the beating heart thundering just for him. His hands on Yunchang’s side, following the tapering of his chest down to his waist, his thumbs rubbing against the jutting bones that marked his hips. The soft skin on Yunchang’s thighs, untouched by any except for him; the back of his knees, where a kiss made Yunchang’s foot kick out and a giggle to gather at the base of his throat.

If Mengde had this every day for the next three months, it would not be enough. If he had enough this every day for the rest of his life, it would not be enough.

It was he who was supposed to mark, but Mengde felt marked himself: Yunchang’s quiet gasps and pants, the rasp of his skin upon the cloth of his under-robes, the scrape of his nails upon the plastic of the mattress. The rhythmic rocking of his hips, matched with the creaks of the cot. The smell of him: the stream feeding into the sea as the salt grew heavier and heavier, filling the stale recycled air of the moon with the heat of his desire. 

“Mengde,” Yunchang’s voice, strangled, so different from the composed one he had used when they first met, when Yunchang was stiff on his knees instead of pliant upon his back. “I…”

Placing his mouth on the prominent bone of the ankle, Mengde turned his head. He closed his teeth against the strong tendon at the back of the foot, and relished in Yunchang’s jerking cry.

“This is how you deserve to be touched,” he said. “With reverence, and with worship.”

He knew Yunchang would protest; knew the man’s humility would threaten to choke him once more. Mengde pushed himself further up the cot, making it squeak dangerously, and took Yunchang’s cock into his mouth.

“Ah-” Yunchang’s hips fitting perfectly into his hands- “Me-” the taste of him, the weight of him, filling Mengde’s tongue and mouth- “Ah- nn-” the twist of his waist, the muscles flexing- “AHH-” as Mengde let the head of his cock bump against the back of his throat. “Please!”

Desperate twitching of his own throat. Rasp of his breathing, barely audible above Yunchang’s gasping cries. Grains of sand against his knees even through the silk of his robes and the nylon of the tent. In the records of history, there existed plenty who once thought this was a shameful act.

Lifting his eyes, Mengde looked his fill. The strip of red was still bright on Yunchang’s neck, but its starkness had faded with the flush that washed over him from chest to cheeks. His head was tilted back, throat trembling with every gasping breath, and the veins on his arms stood out from how hard he was grasping his own cotton under-robe.

“Mengde, Mengde, _please_!”

All those in history were fools. This was worship, this was honour: mutually given, mutually taken.

Leaning back, Mengde allowed Yunchang’s cock to fall from his mouth. Before the warrior could breathe in, he licked a long stripe from base to tip, dipping his tongue into the slit that seeped such salt and water, both precious. 

“Come,” he said, steeling his voice into the whip-sharp threads he used for commands. “Come for me, Yunchang.”

His hands closed once more around Yunchang’s hips, holding him down as he took him into his mouth again. Right as he felt the trembling reached their peak, he pulled back, hollowing his cheeks.

Then he let go of those hips. At the same time, he reached behind, and pressed the tips of his fingers against Yunchang’s entrance. Only pressure, without entering.

“ _Mengde_!”

The scream he made would resound throughout the camp. Mengde hoped that the sound would carry through the walls of the city; would breach through even the cloisters of Liu Bei’s estate.

Perhaps he could not erase the ribbon of forever-fresh blood on Yunchang’s throat, but he could engrave the insides of it with his own name.

Rocking his body backwards, Mengde wiped carefully at his lips with a finger. He lifted his head to meet Yunchang’s glazed over eyes. Crawling up, he pressed that same digit to Yunchang’s mouth, nudging it open, before he kissed him. Kissed him, and parted his lips so Yunchang’s slippery, salty come slipped into the man’s own mouth.

Yunchang arched beneath him. His arm snapped around Mengde’s chest, fingers clenching around the silk that covered his back. His body was covered with sweat and spit, and he was pressed so close to Mengde that it all smeared upon the silk.

Mengde wished to mark but he was marked himself. He closed his eyes even as he pulled back, unable to stop his usual composed breathing from transmogrifying into shallow, rapid pants. 

“Look,” Mengde said, and cleared his throat when the hoarseness of his own voice surprised himself. He took Yunchang’s hands, and pressed them to his own chest, sliding down so he could feel the sticky stains on the silk. “The marks you have left on me.” The desecrations Yunchang had made on the marks of his office.

Those dark eyes looked at him, still bleary. Then, in a swift movement, Yunchang reached up, and pulled away the tie that kept Mengde’s hair bound at the top of his head.

Blinking, Mengde reared back. He reached up and touched one hand to the strands. Except in the close confines of his rooms, in the midst of sleep, he had never left his hair unbound. None had ever witnessed him so; even when Wenyuan or any of the other generals came to him with an emergency in the middle of the night, Mengde had always been alert enough to bind his hair back before they could see him.

Another mark scored into his mind. The gift held within his own trembling hands that he had not noticed until Yunchang stole its weight away. 

Yunchang’s fingers on his cheek, warm and gentle. Mengde turned his head.

“I know the difference between sacrifice and duty,” Yunchang told him. His chest heaved for air but his hands were steady on Mengde’s face, gentle as they traced the curve of his cheekbones over and over again. “Your hands have led me to feel the gulf between the two, and I know which it is that I feel.”

Mengde opened his mouth, but Yunchang was now smiling at him, lopsided. “You tell me that you have no honour and only selfishness, Mengde,” he said, and the coil of his tongue around that name was still shudderingly sweet. “Yet you hold on so tightly to the first, and kept the second away so fervently.”

Reaching out, Mengde brushed his fingers over Yunchang’s hair, pushing the now-tangled strands away from his face. “You do not know,” he started, but Yunchang was laughing. Silently, his shoulders shaking, his eyes pressed nearly shut but, _oh_ , there were such constellations there.

“I am a warrior and a soldier both,” Yunchang said, his lips quirking upwards into a smile. “Do you believe that there are no men like you in my army?”

 _Mine_. In reminding Mengde of his selfishness, Yunchang had found some of his own. 

Closing his eyes, Mengde smiled. He leaned in until he pressed his forehead against this man, this warrior, who should be his and could never be. Yunchang’s hand was warm against the nape of his neck, having snuck beneath the heavy drape of his hair, and those fingers so used to weaponry and death were gentle upon his skin.

“Wait here for me,” Mengde said. He pulled back, and stood up from the cot. It took some effort for his feet to be steady.

When he returned to the cot – having made a trip to the case of belongings that his men knew to bring for him from Xu whenever they camped out – Yunchang was lying on the bed. His lip was once more caught by his teeth, and his fingers were gently trailing up and down his stomach and thighs. His cock, half-curled against a golden thigh, awoke once more. 

The sudden rush of desire had Mengde stumbling. He caught himself in time, one hand on the ground as he balanced himself, making sure to not drop the glass bottle in hand. 

Yunchang was laughing at him again. This time, Mengde leaned in and captured those silent chuckles with his lips, breathing them in even as his hands tugged at the ties of his own robes.

He shed the silk without letting his lips part from Yunchang, exchanging breaths and touches of lips more than touch. There was so much warmth within him, filling up places that he had not even thought to be empty. Here, deep within: Mengde found the heart he had once thought long abandoned to be aching.

“Come here,” Yunchang said. His fingers tangled in Mengde’s hair, and he tugged him up towards the cot, his knees spreading wide and toes hooking against the edge. “Will you not keep your promise?”

“Wait,” Mengde said. He splayed his hand beneath Yunchang’s ribs, lifting him up even as he put the glass bottle down on the floor. Then, picking up the pile of silk that was his robes, he slid them underneath Yunchang’s body. Yunchang’s eyes widened for just a moment, then he lifted his hips.

Obliging and pliable. Mengde’s fingers shuddered as he clambered onto the bed.

“There are parts of you that I wish to touch that should be kept hidden from hands like mine,” he finally returned, cupping Yunchang’s face, and granting him a soft lopsided smile. “There are marks I wish to make that goes beyond selfishness.”

The sides of Yunchang’s eyes crinkled as he smiled. “You have emptied your ship for me,” he said, arching up towards the touch of Mengde’s hand on his cheek, his fingers brushing the insides of his thighs, nails scraping light over the silk beneath him. “Surely that already goes beyond selfishness?”

“You underestimate me,” Mengde said, his own lips twitching. He twisted open the cap of Earth-blown glass bottle with his hand, and held the mouth of it underneath Yunchang’s nose to let him breathe in sandalwood mixed with almond. “My selfishness knew only the bounds of that which my hands ache for.”

Tipping his head back, Yunchang looked at him from underneath his lashes. “Perhaps, Mengde, it is not your selfishness that is at fault, nor your capriciousness.” He hooked his heel over Mengde’s now-bare hip, lifting himself upwards. “It is only your tongue that is too silver and too swift.”

“Perhaps,” Mengde said, shoulders shaking with helpless laughter. “But Yunchang, it is your tongue that is now far too steady.”

Slicking his fingers with oil, he pushed one inside. He watched as Yunchang’s eyes went wide, his heel digging harder into Mengde’s spine, before he pulled it out and pressed in two. As Yunchang gasped, shifting on the cot, he curved his fingers up and ducked his head down at the same time.

“I will have you,” he murmured in tandem to Yunchang’s gasping cries as he fucked him with his fingers. “I will have you, and mark you, and all who see you the next day will know that there is a part of you that belongs to me.”

Before Yunchang could reply, Mengde pulled out the two fingers, and pushed three inside.

He knew he was going too quickly. He knew that he wasn’t giving Yunchang enough time to get used to the feeling of penetration. But there were no protests from that voice, and the trembling of those lips read more pleasure than pain. Mengde closed his eyes, touching their foreheads together again as he started thrusting his fingers.

Long, slow strokes. Yunchang’s hands trying to cover his own face as his breath twisted into gasping, half-sobbing hitches. Those arms nudged into wrapping around Mengde’s neck as he rocked against him, both heels pressing against his hips now. The flush on his skin spreading from forehead down to his chest, fading off against his stomach. The strip of red on his neck drowned, drowned. Fingers twitching and clawing at Mengde’s back, tugging at his hair.

“ _Please_.”

“You ask for my selfishness,” Mengde said. “Do you truly mean it?”

Yunchang’s eyes, squeezed shut all this while, fluttered open once more. “I mean it,” he said. His hands cupped Mengde’s cheeks, still tremulous. “Give me your selfishness, Mengde, for I willingly take all of it.”

His lips curved into a smile that bared his teeth. “I desire it.”

Captured lightning in that mouth, in those words. Lightning breathed into Mengde’s spine. He inhaled shakily and pulled his fingers out, folding Yunchang’s legs backwards, touching his knees to his shoulders, before he kissed him.

And Mengde breathed in his rasping gasp as he pushed inside, stretching Yunchang’s hole wide around his cock, claiming him from the inside.

The curtain of his own hair falling around them, shielding Yunchang’s face from sight. The pleasure writ over his feature, carved over his lips, all that was for Mengde alone. The gasps that twisted into moans, tiny “ah, ah, _ah_ ” that escaped him with every thrust, was for Mengde to own, and no one else. The crescents made on his shoulders from Yunchang’s nails, the bruises on his back from his heels… all those, all those were marks that Mengde took with selfish, greedy hands.

“ _Yunchang_ ,” he breathed. He closed his teeth around the strip of red on Yunchang’s neck, the mark left there by hands not his own, and he twisted the skin. He felt the shuddering cry trembling against his mouth, rattling against his teeth. He closed his eyes. He moved to another spot, and did it again, covering the red with bruises that would turn purple and black and green.

There was no silver he could inflict on skin with teeth. This would have to do. 

He rocked into Yunchang again and again. He was selfish but his pleasure was secondary. He drowned in Yunchang’s desire, in his bliss, breathing all of that in. He filled the heart he had found again with the sound of Yunchang’s cry when he wrapped a hand around his cock; when he made him come all over again, giving him pleasure he had never known.

Mengde knew he could not prevent Yunchang from taking another to his bed in the future. He could only ensure that Yunchang would feel all other hands to be inferior to his own.

His hips had slowed to a stop when Yunchang clenched around him tight. Now he brought his hand up, licking at his fingers, letting the taste of Yunchang’s ocean mark his tongue. He made to pull out.

But the heels on his back dug in hard, and Yunchang’s eyes were so bright and sharp on him. 

“I want,” he said, the words so sharply enunciated they threatened to cut, “your selfishness. Mengde.”

 _You do not know what you’re asking for_ , Mengde wanted to say. He stopped, for he did not know the answer himself; he, always so deeply-rooted, had found himself swept away by the swift-running currents that was Yunchang.

Reaching out, he cupped one flushed cheek, feeling the heat of the skin against his own. “You have grown prideful in my presence,” he said, and leaned down and kissed him again.

Arm sliding underneath Yunchang’s waist, he raised him up halfway, pulling him close until Yunchang was fully in his lap, buried in deep. Then he caught hold of those eyes with his own, brushing away strands of hair away from where they were stuck to Yunchang’s sweat-slicked face. 

He warned, “Hold on tight,” and he took. He took with his hands on Yunchang’s hips, slamming hard into him. He took with his eyes fixed on that face, devouring the moment when Yunchang realised that pleasure could reach such heights that it turned into pain. He seized in the sounds of Yunchang’s voice, the repeated calls of his name. He stole those hands as they clawed on black silk, shifting them to his shoulders again, and relished in the streaks of pain, pleasure given to him by hands more used to killing.

When he came himself, he did so with his lips to Yunchang, tasting the salt of his pain-caused tears, licking into his mouth. He tore himself even as he could see nothing but white, moving himself down skin until he found one of the bites he had left on Yunchang’s skin, biting down until he could feel the butterfly-beats of his pulse against his teeth.

The cot squawked angrily as he fell. An inconsequential thing; barely noticeable in contrast to Yunchang’s body, solid and entirely enfolded by his own. 

After a moment, when he could catch enough breath to steady his arms again, Mengde lifted himself up. Yunchang watched him through half-lidded eyes, and Mengde smiled, edges twisted, as he tucked the edges of the robes around Yunchang’s body. 

The sleeves, with their silver embroidery, were folded close to Yunchang’s neck. Silver shimmering gentle against the stark, angry red of the strip on his throat.

“You will never be mine,” Mengde said, sinking his fingers into those long strands, easing out the tangles gently. “But will you indulge my selfishness one more time?”

Yunchang reached out, his knuckles brushing over Mengde’s jaw, scraping over his beard. His smile was soft at the edges, and his lashes brushed the top of his cheeks. “Save your breath,” he said, “if you’re going to ask this for all three months.”

Fingertips drifting lightly over Yunchang’s hairline, Mengde looked at him. Yunchang had pledged him his service, he knew, but… he cocked his head.

“Do you truly believe that you make for a poor concubine?”

Three months of service. Being in his bed, satisfying his own desires: that was not service, was it?

Brows furrowed for a moment before Yunchang’s shoulders shuddered again. His fingers touched Mengde’s lips, and he shook his head. “There is a great gulf of difference between selfishness and trickery,” he said, his lips in a wry twist. “Though one might be powered by the other, the latter I will not stand for.”

An upright and righteous man. Mengde smiled, for here were the reason for his desire; here, too, was the reason why he would never have. Not wholly. Not in the ways he wanted.

He reached down and cupped Yunchang’s face, kissing him again. He continued kissing him even as he heard a peculiar and particular bird’s call outside; a signal that there was a message for him that his Generals would rather the men would not hear, much less the enemies who were so close to them.

Then the call came again, sharper and more insistent. Mengde sighed, turning his head so his breath brushed over Yunchang’s throat, and he pulled back.

“Will you wait here?” 

Yunchang cocked his head. He shifted on the cot, sliding his hand down his body and dislodging somewhat the silk that covered him; the shimmering black waterfall of cloth that set stark his pale skin and the bruises on his throat.

“I will not leave,” he said, and it sounded like a promise.

Mengde splayed his hand over that long column. He focused on the beat of Yunchang’s heart beneath him for a moment before he nodded, and stood up. He walked past his personal rooms towards the door of the tent before he picked up Yunchang’s outer robes.

They were too small for him, stretching uncomfortably tight around the shoulders and the waist. But Mengde did not wear them for comfort, or convenience.

He lifted his fingers into his mouth and sent out the answering signal. After a moment, he unbuttoned the tent and pulled the flap open to allow Wenyuan in.

And raised his eyebrow at the filled basin and cloth that the man had in his hand.

“Is that what you called me out for?” Mengde asked. He _did_ have such supplies within the tent itself, after all. 

“No, my lord,” Wenyuan said. He did not elaborate, but Mengde understood: perhaps it was Yunchang’s cry, perhaps it was the fact that Mengde had dragged him into the tent and shut it and neither of them came out; whatever the reason, the generals knew. Maybe the men, too.

Honestly, he would be surprised if they had missed something he had not bothered to hide. What surprised him more was Wenyuan’s presence, and the furrow between his brows that had nothing to do with the smell of sex in the air.

“The Emperor wishes an audience with you, my Lord,” Wenyuan said finally. His back was to Mengde, having headed to a nearby side table to put down the basin. “In Luoyang.”

“He wishes for me to return to Earth,” Mengde said.

“Within the month, my lord,” Wenyuan said.

Which meant that he must leave Yunchang behind, and miss the time he would spend with him, or he had to bring him along with him to meet that troublesome boy. Mengde sighed.

“I take it that he has heard of the recent battle.”

“It would be hard for him not to, my lord,” Wenyuan said. He finally turned around, and there was a wryness to the twist of his mouth. “For Lord Cao to come to Liu Bei’s help… it is unprecedented.”

Especially when Mengde named himself loyal to the throne, and Liu Bei claimed it to be rightfully his own. Mengde’s lips twitched. He always knew there would be consequences to his actions, and now Wenyuan had brought him two: the basin for cleansing; the desire for an audience as a reminder of loyalty.

Maybe it was long past time Mengde upped the ante of the game. It had been getting rather boring anyway.

“You’re dismissed,” Mengde said. As Wenyuan bowed and made to leave, Mengde said, pitching his voice unnecessarily loud: “You can tell them what it is that I have draped upon my skin.”

Wenyuan shot him a wry glance. “Be careful, my lord,” he said out of the corner of his mouth. “Even a wolf might meet his match amidst a pack of hyenas.”

“Or the scavengers might turn out to be the scavenged,” Mengde returned, waving a hand. He let the tent flap drop back down, buttoned it, and headed back inside with the basin and cloth.

“What is it?” Yunchang asked him. He had sat up, and his new position cast the light of Earth – diffused through the tent’s nylon – over his skin. His sweat shimmered.

Mengde had been right: the light of him definitely outshone the silver threads of the robes.

“Nothing I will have you worrying about,” Mengde said. He wet the cloth and pressed it against Yunchang’s skin. Yunchang tipped his head back, eyes closing as he leaned towards the touch of the cool water.

His warrior made pliable and sweet. Mengde leaned in, and kissed him again. He exhaled the rest of the sentence into his mouth:

 _For you will never be truly mine_.

There would be consequences to deal with. At worst, a possible mutiny, with some of the power-hungry Generals who might have thought him addled by desire. If he changed the stakes of the game for this, he would have to deal with them for years, perhaps decades.

What was the line he told Sun Shangxiang again? The one Yunchang said would be recorded in the annals of history?

Ah, yes: _to lose the lady, and cripple the army._ He tilted his head and took Yunchang’s mouth deeper.

He would lose the general, and he had already injured his army with a future of crippling them if his generals tore the men apart.

In return: Yunchang beside him, in his arms, for three months.

Well.

It had been too long since Mengde had met a proper challenge anyway.

_End_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the words of [chuchisushi](http://archiveofourown.org/users/chuchisushi/): “Cao Cao... my dude... get that boner under control before it gets you killed.”
> 
> This fic was supposed to be only porn, but then I spent 10k giving Guan Yu an agency so that him giving it up would mean something. Somewhere along the line, Cao Cao caught feelings. I also ended up with a ridiculous number of recurring symbols and motifs and themes. Only the last one is expected; the rest weren’t planned at all. At some point, these guys just took over, I guess. 
> 
> Once more dedicated to the Ragethirst crew on discord. This fic essentially saved my sanity during a period when I was both overworked and frustrated over said work.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me @[evocating](http://evocating.tumblr.com) on tumblr where I nerd out a lot about basically everything.


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